I Dreamt of Jesse Wente

I don’t know Jesse Wente, but I have a lot of respect for him. He is smart, passionate, thoughtful, articulate, has a good sense of humour, and is a tireless advocate for Indigenous peoples. Everything he says makes sense to me. Recently, I had a dream that he was in. We were talking on the phone. We were agreeing…. “Exactly,” he said. “But we can’t talk about education without talking about the TRC and Residential Schools… and we can’t talk about the TRC and Residential Schools without talking about Colonialism… and we can’t talk about Colonialism without talking about Genocide and the theft of lands… and we can’t talk about Genocide and the theft of lands without talking about Treaties…. Suddenly he was in the room. We sat on a sofa. I said I was so happy to finally meet him and talk as I had lost his card the first time we had spoken briefly after a viewing of We Were Children, a film about Residential Schools by Tim Wolochatiuk with a Q &A after that included Ry Moran, Director, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and Dr. Ian Mosby, a food historian and researcher who helped uncover the gross food deprivation that occurred at many residential schools and the experiments on children that followed to study the effects of malnutrition. There were about 15 people in the auditorium for the film and Q&A. The Jays, or Leafs, or Raptors, or FC, must have been playing we sarcastically and sadly mused. Or Maybe it was Game of Thrones….

Moments later I was awake. 5:25 am. I tried to go back to sleep. Nope. So I propped myself up and picked my laptop off the floor….

“Don’t mistake my emotion here, or my civility anywhere, as weakness.” This is what Jesse Wente had said on the radio show, Metro Morning. It was a discussion about cultural appropriation, but Mr. Wente made it very clear that it was about a lot more…. The appropriation of all things Indigenous and the institutionalization of that appropriation that this country is founded upon….

Maybe “appropriation” is too vague a word. What about “plunder”? I think it’s more apt. Our democracy and way of life is founded on plunder. And in this we are not alone. But the plunder of lands, and the plunder of Indigenous peoples, and the legalization of that plunder is so intrinsic in the fabric of society that most fail or refuse to recognize it. And in place of that recognition we have indifference, inaction and, the Buffalo in the room, systemic and institutionalized racism.

“Words are great, but we need actions,” he said in that interview. I couldn’t agree more. Without action, words like “Reconciliation” will soon be, if not already, rendered meaningless. Did you read Alicia Elliot’s recent article, or hear anything that Indigenous writers and thought leaders are telling us, and have been telling us for decades? People like Thomas King, Lee Maracle, Chelsea Vowel, Pam Palmater, Cindy Blackstock, Hayden King, Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, Roberta Jamieson, Murray Sinclar, Niigan Sinclair, Rick Harp, Kim Tall Bear, Erica Violet Lee, Ryan McMahon, Leanne Simpson, Arthur Manuel, dozens and dozens more…. Do you know what Shannen’s Dream is, or Jordan’s Principle? Do you know who Richard Wagemese was and is? Do you know about the teens dying for an education in Thunder Bay. And speaking of Thunder Bay, do you know who Barbara Kentner is and was? Are you following the news on the MMIW inquiry? Did you listen to Who Killed Alberta Williams? Do the names Nina Wilson, Sheelah Mclean, Sylvia McAdam, and Jessica Gordon mean anything to you? Or more simply, do you even know whose land you are sitting on, what tribe and culture was pushed to near extinction for the Starbucks that sits here today?

Wait… hear that? It’s the sound of Canada’s collective eye roll…. Not all Canadians, but sadly, probably most. If you’re bothering to read this, then you perhaps, and hopefully, know a bit of what I’m talking about, and know, or at least recognize some of the names, causes and events that I listed above…. If you’ve read my other posts, you know my basic premise; what made me get my ass in gear is this: now that we all know at least a little bit of what really happened, and continues to happen in this country, a failure to act is an act of complicity.

Reconciliation is on us. Knowing our real history in on us. And by “us” I mean all non-Indigenous Canadians. An apology without a significant change of behaviour does not make everything or anything better. It makes it worse. Listen, babe… I’ve been behaving really badly these past 200 years or so and I’m really sorry. Now slip into something a little more comfortable and I’ll pour us a couple of drinks….

Our power and privilege cannot remain invisible to us. We cannot be fish swimming around and around, wondering what water is. In the age of fake news and sound bite spin we can all have our own opinions, but we cannot all have our own facts. And the facts speak for themselves, and have been speaking for themselves for a very long time. But once again, it’s just more words. And about the only thing words have been good for in terms of our relationship with Indigenous peoples is for lying to them. Denying that we have the power to help change everything is almost as reprehensible as the denial that we’re responsible in the first place.

As Jesse Wente said in that Metro Morning broadcast, “These things can’t happen again. This absorbs so much energy, it causes so much pain in our community, to have to re-argue for our value as human beings, on our own land? In a foreign language as I do to you now, one that was imposed on us? Please. What are we talking about in 2017.”

But if you dare to read the comments that appear below any opinion piece along these lines, (that is if they still allow comments), you will see that racism and its dubious and treacherous mythologies are alive and well from sea to shining sea. From Double Double to He Shoots, He Scores. Look no further than Senator Lynn Beyak, her supporters and apologists. Look no further than an all white jury acquitting Gerarald Stanley for shooting Colten Boushie in the head. Stanley said the gun just went off. Experts said the gun was working correctly and the trigger had to have been pulled. Testimony says the youths were trying to steal an ATV. Even if that’s true it is no justification for deadly force. The not guilty verdict says loud and clear that Indigenous people don’t count, not as much as an ATV at least, and that their erasure is still state sanctioned in 2018. Somehow, as @ZoeSTodd, said “we would rather believe in a magic gun” than face our true history and the endless plague of systemic racism. As Niigaan Sinclair says, “What’s the point of trying to change a country that doesn’t want to change?” And he, the son of Senator Murray Sinclair, is a tireless advocate for reconciliation.

With the election of Trudeau, the rhetoric from Ottawa appeared to be a slight improvement. But it’s just more words. And it may actually be making things worse because now non-Indigenous people believe that things are changing when they are not. The splitting of INAC was done completely without consultation and references to RCAP were a stretch at best, a cynical bit of political fakery at worst. As a tireless advocate for Indigenous peoples recently told me, “unfortunately, no one ever got votes giving money to Indians.” And it’s going to take a lot of money. Maybe even as much as we actually owe them. And there’s the rub. Until we recognize that this is our debt to repay and we help, nation-to-nations, dismantle the Indian Act and every other paternalistic, misogynistic, colonial system that we have used and continue to use to undermine and erase Indigenous rights and peoples, there can be no reconciliation. But there will come a time of reckoning – especially, once again, if we fail to act in good faith. If we continue to impose laws that rarely, if ever, deliver justice to Indigenous peoples.

So when the roads and railways and pipelines are blocked and disrupted, will you be surprised, shocked, outraged? What will we do when the heavy hand of colonialism is once again balled into a fist? Activists and just regular folk who take a stand will be called radicals and terrorists. There will be calls for intervention. There will more be state-sanctioned violence. I really hope it doesn’t come to this, but I’m very afraid that it will. There’s just still too many of us completely oblivious to any of this, or worse, the far too many who think Gerald Stanley is innocent and that Senator Beyak is right – that these mythical “handouts” have to stop.

The next night I had another dream. I was swimming in a river. I was swimming on my side and was moving very fast with the current, but it was lovely and exhilarating. The water was exquisitely clear and deep and I could see, with the eye that was in the water, tremendous boulders and long stretches of sand and swaying grasses far below me. Suddenly the river was full of people, but we were all moving quickly along together and it was peaceful and serene. Just then one of my daughters appeared on the bank, but she was two or three years old again. “Jump, Jump” I called, and she leapt effortlessly off the bank into my arms. I held her up in the air with one hand spread across her chest and stomach and she spread her arms out like a great bird as she balanced on my hand and I held her up in the air as we sped down the river. “Daddy, she said, looking down at me with a big smile. “Are you sleeping?” “No,” I said. “I’m not sleeping.” “Daddy,” she said, the smile somehow growing wider. “You’re sleeping. Wake up!”

I’m awake now.

Are you?